


smooth the feathers

by winter_hiems



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Legacy
Genre: Autistic David Haller, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Feelings, Fluff, Flying, Mental Health Issues, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Touching, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, Wings, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25067944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems
Summary: David is used to people hurting his wings. Clipping the feathers or shoving them into a straitjacket.One day, Ruth offers to groom his wings.
Relationships: Ruth Aldine/David Haller
Kudos: 19





	smooth the feathers

**Author's Note:**

> David’s wings are completely black, like a crow or a raven. Ruth has osprey wings.

It had taken a long time for David to feel comfortable about his wings. He supposed that he must have been alright with them when he was a kid, back before Daniel got shot and everything fell to shit, but that had been a long time ago. Fuck. Eleven years. How did that happen so fast? 

And then he’d ended up in Muir Island at the tender age of six, and wings started being a problem for him and a convenience for everyone else. Because when he was struggling against the nurses with teeth and hands and telekinesis, one of them would come up behind him and grab his wings, then drag him back to a padded cell, leaving a trail of torn-out black feathers in their wake. The memory always made him shudder. 

Most kids learned to fly in their early teens. Not David. On Muir, his feathers had been clipped far too short for flying, or even gliding. David’s powers meant that he could have flown without wings, but it still felt like a restriction. A prohibition. A part of his body that he wasn’t allowed to use. After all, he didn’t always have access to the powers that he could use to fly; if his feathers had been allowed to grow out then he would have been able to fly whenever he wanted. 

After the Shadow King’s attack, when his father had dumped him at Merzah’s Himalayan clinic with a promise to visit that he’d never made good on, Merzah had watched David take off his coat, taken one look at David’s wings and said, “Well shit.” 

David had to agree with him. His primary feathers had still been clipped from Muir, and there were bare patches where feathers had been rubbed away by the straitjacket. Not a pretty sight. 

His primaries had grown back after two months, but it had taken a year for the bald patches to be covered by fresh growth. 

As much as Merzah’s therapies hadn’t been fully effective at helping him cope with his dissociative identity disorder, David would be eternally grateful to the man for one thing: he had let David use his wings. 

With David’s primaries re-grown, Merzah had started teaching him the basics of flight. David had felt kind of embarrassed at first, learning the sort of things that a twelve-year old would know at the age of sixteen. But it had meant that he was learning to _fly._

Sure, the first few attempts had been awkward and wobbly, but after a few months he could do a pretty decent glide. He worked at it every day, relishing every improvement. Within six months, he could properly fly. 

(Merzah had set some ground rules for this: never leave the clinic’s airspace unaccompanied, and never fly higher than 48 feet without someone there to catch him if he fell. To Merzah’s exasperation, David rarely if ever followed these rules.) 

The view as he flew over the Himalayas had been breath-taking. Sure, he had been abandoned by his parents and his only friend was his therapist, and he was still truly fucked-up in the head, but that _view_. Wind in his feathers, mountains far below, freezing air in his lungs. Flying felt as good as stimming. 

He’d found it somewhat amusing when he discovered that none of his alters were any good at using his wings. He guessed that it came from the fact that none of them had formed while his wings were free to move, so they’d never been able to figure out how his wings worked. It meant that his wings were the one part of his body that belonged solely to him, to David Haller, not to anything or anyone else prowling about his brain. 

It had felt strange, at first, to have his wings free, especially once his plumage was back. He kept knocking them into things, which hurt, and he kept flapping them when he didn’t mean to. Luckily Merzah was the only one around when that happened, and as David’s therapist, they had a strict no-judgement policy with regards to the fact that David still moved his wings like a kid who’d only just learned how to glide. 

David was glad that he’d got them mostly under control by the time he’d met Ruth, because losing control of your wings in front of your girlfriend was definitely in the top ten of embarrassing things to do on date night. 

*

Ruth’s wings were beautiful. Soft and brown, delicately patterned, not a feather out of place. The first time she’d wrapped a wing around him, thinking in complete sentences had become a real struggle. He’d done a lot of practice on his own before he’d tried to reciprocate. As much as he’d learned from Merzah, his dexterity wasn’t the best. 

Still, he’d been able to hold his own when they went flying together. David’s wings were large and strong, he had always been slim, and the combination meant that he was built for speed. 

They’d returned to David’s cabin breathless and laughing, and then Ruth had asked him if he would straighten out a few of her feathers, and David had internally panicked. 

He probably should have seen this coming. Couples groomed each other all the time. 

Except that David had never groomed anyone other than himself before, and the last time anyone had bothered to groom him had been before he lost his mind. Merzah hadn’t done it for him – grooming a patient was considered inappropriate behaviour for a therapist – so David had done his best to groom himself, and silently accepted the fact that the feathers he couldn’t reach would always look kind of scruffy. 

Still, he did his best for Ruth. Smoothed out the feathers that had got ruffled, gently pressing them back into place. Afterwards, she’d looked at his handiwork in the mirror and smiled, and David released a breath that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. 

Then she turned, and asked if she could do him in return, and David had sat down on the bed, and Ruth had sat behind him, and luckily she couldn’t see him blushing from here. 

Being groomed felt… nice. He couldn’t remember anyone ever touching his wings gently. He supposed that his mother must have groomed him when he was a kid, but those memories were long ago and thinking back to them hurt. 

This didn’t hurt. As Ruth worked her way along his coverts, he got the occasional shudder of adrenaline from _there’s someone behind you she’s touching your wings she’s going to clip you_ , but he took deep breaths and let the panic dissipate. Once he’d relaxed, he found himself enjoying it. Ruth was being incredibly gentle with his wings, keeping her touch light. She didn’t speak, and David thought he understood why. It was too intimate. Grooming each other was taking their relationship to another level. 

He got so absorbed in it that he was surprised when she told him she was done. He went to the mirror. 

Ebony feathers groomed to perfection. Smooth and sleek. “Wow…” He turned from side to side, checking out the angles. “I don’t think they’ve ever looked this good before.” 

She came up behind him, and he turned to face her. “Well, if you – yes – ever want me to do it again, you can just ask.” 

David couldn’t help it then. His wings flicked out and folded again just as fast. “Ah shit, sorry about that.” 

“It’s fine.” 

“Yeah, but controlling your wings… even little kids can do that. I can’t.” 

She smiled at him. “It’s kind of cute.” 

“It’s not.” 

“No, it really is.” Ruth came up to him and kissed him softly. One of her hands slid up under his arm, burying itself in his coverts. 

David kissed her again, deeper this time. “Y’know, I think you just messed up those feathers you spent ages grooming.” 

“Well, I’ll just have to groom them again.” 

“Oh no. What an absolute _tragedy_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea from a drawing that im-thekeeper posted on tumblr. At first I just thought “Oh, a picture of David Haller with wings. Cool.” Then I felt the idea take hold of me and I thought, “Oh, here we go.”
> 
> I think that David’s lack of fine coordination with his wings is a combination of factors: he never got to use them during the years when most people would be learning control, he’s autistic, so fine motor control is difficult for him anyway, and he’s spent years with his wings wrapped up in a straitjacket, so he kind of wants to be moving them a lot.
> 
> Also, I think that for David, moving his wings is a form of unconscious stimming. (For those who don’t know, stimming is when an autistic person does something that produces a pleasant or calming sensory experience. In this case, when David flicks his wings.)
> 
> It takes just under two months for a bird’s feathers to grow back after clipping. Feather damage takes a year to heal. 48 feet is the average height a human can fall from without dying.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome <3
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. The characters are owned by Marvel. I am not making money from this work.


End file.
